WhiteHorse Finance, Inc. (NASDAQ:WHF) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Stuart Aronson: Robert, I should have been clear and I wasn’t clear. I apologize for that. The dislocation in the lower mid-market is almost entirely on sponsor deals. So we see that lower price on lower mid-market sponsor deals. We have a deal mandated right now that we hope to close in mid-June. That is a non-sponsored transaction with pricing of $750 over at leverage of under 3x EBITDA. So the non-sponsored market continues to be robust, low-priced, conservative leverage, conservative terms, and we’re working on a number of non-sponsored transactions. So I would not expect, in general, a change for the balance of the year between sponsor and non-sponsor. It was just the luck of the draw that in this past quarter, all 3 deals that we closed were sponsor deals.

Robert Dodd: Got it. So we would see a little bit of a bifurcation like the most continued sponsor deals, but those probably in the lower market and then the more sponsor deals in the upper end of the market, is that fair?

Stuart Aronson: I think what you’ll see is the non-sponsor deals will be both lower mid-market and mid-market. The deal that I was making reference to that is mandated that should close in June actually has more than $30 million of EBITDA. So it’s a mid-market size deal. So our non-sponsor pipeline is reasonably strong right now with both lower mid-market and mid-market opportunities. And all of those opportunities are either priced very attractively or we have one deal where the leverage is extremely low, like 1x leverage and the pricing would be about 6.25. And that would go into the JV.

Robert Dodd: Got it. Got it. I appreciate that. And then last one, obviously, your portfolio leverage, to your point, you can handle higher rates given the relatively lower portfolio leverage and your spreads aren’t super high, they’re attractive, but they’re not super high. So that tends to imply pretty decent interest coverage. Is there a — at what point would you actually be worried for lack of a better term, how high — and again, forward curve is indicating down, but how high would the Fed have to go for you to feel concerned from the perspective of coverage that you may be needing to provide more support or sponsors needing to provide meaningful support just from a kind of an interest coverage from a rate perspective?

Stuart Aronson: Robert, our interest coverage ratio on average across the portfolio is greater than 2x. Individual credits vary much more significantly. We ran an analysis in the face of a yield curve that is predicting lower rates, and we ran the assumption that rates went up by 100 basis points, and there was no material additional stress in the portfolio even if rates went up another 100 basis points. So that’s the best sensitivity I can give you right now. Again, we expect interest rates to be peaking out, but if they went up 100 basis points more, we would not, on most accounts see an interest coverage problem or a debt service problem.

Operator: And we’ll take our next question from Eric Zwick with Hovde Group.

Erik Zwick: Wanted to start just on the STRS joint venture, and I know you referenced you’ve made a greater commitment to it and continues to grow and you added some new investments here in the first quarter, and it sounds like a couple more slated for 2Q. So just curious, longer term, how you think about its concentration in your total portfolio and if you have a target range or potentially even a cap on how large it could become?